Page 67 of The Outsider

“Curious.”

“She drove through the garden at my parents’ house and took out all of my mom’s flowers.”

“What did you do to her?”

“She thought I cheated on her because I talked to the checker at the grocery store for more than ten minutes one day.”

She blinked. “Did you?”

“She was sixty-five,” he said.

She cleared her throat. “I mean... did you?”

“No.”

Well, okay, she could see why he’d led with the info about his ex.

“Nothing is going to happen with me and Daughtry,” she said. “Here is the thing. He’s... Well, he’s older than me, first of all. Second of all, he’s a police officer. I think he feels duty bound to help me. To be nice to me and all of that. He’s a caregiver. It’s not like that for him.”

She felt so... small and sad. Here was a perfectly nice guy who liked her, and yet again, her dysfunction was making this difficult. Because she had probably imprinted on Daughtry or something because hewas the first person who was nice to her, and that was probably the biggest reason that she felt all these things for him.

And she couldn’t take the nice, normal thing right in front of her because she was fixated.

“We can still hang out, Bix.”

Damn. He was nice. He wasn’t even getting creepy and being mean.

“Thanks,” she said. “I... Thanks. At least for listening to me. When I say that I’m from difficult circumstances, I mean I don’t even have any friends. I don’t really know how to have them.”

“I do. So... I can help you with that.”

She was pretty sure that she sensed a little bit of relief in him all of a sudden. Like he finally got the sense that she was kind of a project, and he didn’t actually want to be saddled with a huge project.

Well. Bully for her. She was able to make him feel good about her rejecting him. Not that she had actually even rejected him. He had just been able to pick up on the vibes. Which were not settled vibes, in fairness.

They stayed for a while longer, and then left. The other King brothers were still there. Daughtry wasn’t.

She suddenly got tense as they got close to the house.

“What if he’sthere? Withher.”

Michael shrugged. “If there’s a tie on the door or something, then I’ll take you somewhere else for a bit.”

“Thanks. I... Is that a thing? The tie on the door?”

Daughtry had said the same thing to her earlier, and she did not get the reference but she’d been too embarrassed to ask him what it meant.

He frowned. “Yeah. It’s kind of a joke, but I think it definitely originates as being something serious.”

She made a small sniffing sound. “I see. Just a pop-culture thing that I am not entirely up on.” She got that sense of relief from him again. “I am a bigger project than you want,” she continued. “Seriously. I never even went to a regular school. I don’t know a lot of things. I’m trying to become a real girl.”

“You’re real enough, Bix,” he said. Though, he did still seem a little bit relieved.

She held on to that, though.

Daughtry’s truck was in the driveway and she decided, with a burst of anger, that if he was there and there was no signal, she was just going to go in.

You’re real enough, Bix.

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